Hi, French translator for CI5 here! I’m glad to see a new entry in the franchise and I’m really enjoying it The community translation engine is a great touch and I’ve started to dive into it, never quite seen something like that indeed and I hope it’s not causing too many headaches.
I tried to download the French translation for CI4 and it would only 404… until I realized just now there’s a typo in the link (“Frech” instead of “French”), if anyone is wondering why it doesn’t work.
I come with a couple suggestions for the translation UI.
The French translation is currently a bit all over the place, with some lines imported from previous games, some machine-translated gibberish, some good and genuine attempts that need a few fixes, some actual great stuff… I’ve been going back and forth adding and editing and voting for a few days, but it’s getting hard to keep track of what I’ve done, what I’ve voted for, etc. With all the humour and references there are in the game, you can’t really just go through it line by line, you have to let things simmer for a while, ponder the alternatives; it’s not a linear process at all.
→ Idea #1: show for each translation if it’s your own or one you voted for. Could be something as simple as different border colors. Would be really helpful to keep track of your progress through the whole translation at a glance.
→ Idea #2: being able to vote for a translation when there’s only one. Means we could mark it both as “seen” in combination with the previous idea, and as already prioritized if someone else later suggests a bad/troll translation.
In French, we (are supposed to) use non-breakable spaces before most punctuation so that it doesn’t get separated by a line return. But they’re visually indistinguishable from a simple space; words processors usually have an option to display them as grey squares, some text editors will underline them…
→ If possible and if it’s not too much of a hassle, could they be identified in such a way? It’s more of a QoL thing, but since it’s not easy to check every line in-game (eg. quips are selected at random) it would help to make sure that stuff doesn’t break. The thousand separator for numbers should be a NBSP, for example, but we can’t see if the current translation is a NBSP or a simple space.
I’ve compiled those suggestions into a single image, if that helps:
Thanks again for all the great work! Now, back to plucking chickens…
I’m making good progress on my end, fixing the current translations first and soon ready to tackle the untranslated strings. In the meantime, there’s some more input/bugs I need to bring up:
Some strings (eg. “[Starname] dealership” for Heroware names) don’t have their argument in the translatable string, so it’s impossible to rearrange the order of the words when needed. I’ve skimmed through it all and identified the following:
(p. 118, about Ghost Trail)
“length” should be “^ length” (French would be “longueur ^”)
“density” should be “^ density” (French would be “densité ^”)
(pp. 119-120, about Strobe Lights)
“blinks” should be “^ blinks” (French would still be “^ clignements” but maybe another language would have it rearranged)
“on:off” is… a bit weird even in English I think, not sure what to do with that one. I was thinking “on:^-off:^” (eg. “on:40-off:4”), and I don’t know yet how I would properly translate it in French, but I feel the arguments should be part of the string (so at least “^:^ on:off”) so there’d be room for translators.
(pp. 171/172, about regional stores)
“campus” should be “^ campus” (French would be “Campus ^”)
“station” should be “^ station” (French would be “Station ^”)
“dealership” should be “^ dealership” (French would be “Concession ^”)
Written dates in mission names don’t fit the French format. Where English reads “Weekly challenge (August 23)”, French would read “Challenge hebdomadaire (23 août)”, with the day and month reversed; same for the Ironman competition and all other instances of “Month day” dates. That’s probably a whole new regional parameter to add (yayyyyy).
Suggestion: Is there a way we could have a dump of the English strings, either as plain text or as a spreadsheet? It’s much easier to work on a translation outside of the game, then copy/write it in once it’s good and polished (translation is not a linear process, blah blah). It would also help with the longer strings like item descriptions and inbox messages. Any format would help, but for extra perfection points it could also include the string ID (for context hints) and comments, eg: WAVEBOSSHENTERPRISEC____Hend Game____// Wordplay on hen + "end game"
I’ve seen some funny translations like “supernova trash”, “idiot railgun” and the like, but this is straight-up unacceptable. I think this is coming from the same person who didn’t put that much effort into translating and wrote them all lowercase. Can you please remove it?
@InterAction_studios A kid is ruining our Vietnamese translation with inappropriate languages(e.g. shit, fuck, dick, motherfucker, etc)
(P.S: he even insulted the man who saved our country: Ho Chi Minh)
@InterAction_studios if you want to see all of the monstrosity that the Vietnamese translation is fucked up into, here’s a google drive link to show how just a kid has ruined the Vietnamese translation entirely: sabotaged translations - Google Drive
The community translation engine is a great touch and I’ve started to dive into it, never quite seen something like that indeed and I hope it’s not causing too many headaches.
